The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X eBook

“The purest honor, the loftiest disinterestedness,
the sincerest devotion, are not everything, there
is needed a capacity for affairs, a knowledge of men,
which experience alone procures and which even the
strongest will cannot give. M. de Polignac had
all the qualities of the most devoted subject, but
his talent did not rise to the height of his position.
If it had been necessary only to suffer and to march
to death, no one, surely, could have equalled him;
but more was requisite, and he remained beneath the
level of the circumstances he thought he was overcoming;
the fall of the throne was the consequence. How
he developed, though, and grew great when in duress,
and who should flatter himself that he could bear
up with a firmness more unshaken against the severest
trials? If M. de Polignac is not a type of the
statesman, he will at least remain the complete model
of the virtues of the Christian and the private citizen.”

The Prince de Polignac was mistaken, but he acted
in good faith. No one can dispute his faults,
but none can suspect the purity of his intentions.
Unfortunately his royalism had in it something of
mysticism and ecstasy that made of this gallant man
a sort of illumine. He sincerely believed that
he had received from God the mission to save the throne
and the altar, and foreseeing neither difficulties
nor obstacles, regarding all uncertainty and all fear
as unworthy of a gentleman and a Christian, he had
in himself and in his ideas, that blind, imperturbable
confidence that is the characteristic of fanatics.
In a period less troubled, this great noble would
perhaps have been a remarkable minister of foreign
affairs, but in the stormy time when he took the helm
in hand, he had neither sufficient prudence nor sufficient
experience to resist the tempest and save the ship
from the wreck in which the dynasty was to go down.

XXIX

GENERAL DE BOURMONT

The new Secretary of War awoke no less lively anger
than the Prince de Polignac. He was a general
of great merit, bold to temerity, brave to heroism,
and a tactician of the first order. But his career
had felt the vicissitudes of politics, and like so
many of his contemporaries,—­more, perhaps,
than any of them,—­he had played the most
contradictory parts. Equally intrepid in the
army of Conde, in the Vendean army, and in the Grand
Army of Napoleon, he had won as much distinction under
the white flag as under the tricolor. The Emperor,
who was an expert in military talent, having recognized
in him a superior military man, had rewarded his services
brilliantly. But it is difficult to escape from
the memories of one’s childhood and first youth.